Environmental indicators

U.S. Environmental Protection Ageney. Offiee of Water. Environmental Indicators of Water Quality in the United States. EPA 841-R-96-002. June 1996. 30 p. 

U.S. Department of Agriculture. Economic Research Seivicc. (1997). Agricultural Resources and Environmental Indicators, 1996-97. Washington, DC U.S. Government Printing Office. 

United Nations (2007) Population connected to wastewater treatment plants. United Nations Statistics Division, Environmental Indicators, Wastewater. Available at http //unstats.un.org/ unsd/ENVIRONMENT/wastewater.htm (June 2009)... 

Sadezky A, Loffler D, Temes T (2008) Proposal of an environmental indicator and classification system of pharmaceutical product residues for environmental management KNAPPE project Knowledge and need assessment on pharmaceutical products in environmental waters . Contract n° 036864. Deliverable 1.2. http //www.knappe-eu.org/... 

In 1996, ISO 14001 was introduced as one of the first widely recognized EMSs. The intent of the standard is for the organization to develop a systematic approach to dealing with environmental concerns and to follow a philosophy of continual improvement in its chosen environmental indicators. The five key elements of ISO 14001 are shown in Figure 3.4. For each element there is a standard that the organization must meet in order to get accreditation. 

An even more streamlined approach scores each stage of the life cycle for impact on a number of environmental indicators. Typical indicators include resource depletion, global warming potential, smog production, acidification, eutrophication, toxic waste production and biodiversity impact. Impact is estimated using a simple numerical scale. The completed matrix is used to focus attention on areas for improvement. 

Jorgensen LA, Pedersen B. 1994. Trace metals in fish used for time trend analysis and as environmental indicators. Marine Pollut Bull 28 235-243. 

Danz NP, Regal RR, Niemi GJ, Brady VJ, Hollenhorst T, Johnson LB, Host GE, Hanowski JM, Johnston CA, Brown T, Kingston J, Kelly JR. 2005. Environmentally stratified sampling design for the development of Great Lakes environmental indicators. Environ Monitor Assess 102 41-65. 

Fodor, P. and Molnar, E. (1993). Honey as an environmental indicator Effect of sample preparation on trace element determination by ICP-AES. Microchim. Acta 112,113-118. 

Trevisan M, Di Guardo A, Balderacchi M (2009) An environmental indicator to drive sustainable pest management practices. Environ Model Software 24(8) 994-1002... 

How can the Ecodesign Directive be further developed to handle the RISKCYCLE-topic So far, pollution issues are involved in the context of product evaluation and the derivation of product standards, but rather in the sense of LCA to capture the energy side and the other relevant environmental indicators. The topic of mercury in compact fluorescent lamps (CFL) has made it clear that pollution issues can be quite important in the context of this Directive. However, relevant limits for energy saving lamps were first set by a waste-related regulation, namely the Annex of the WEEE Directive [7]. 

EEA - European Environmental Agency (2003) Environmental indicators, typology and use in reporting. http //eea.eioneteuropa.eu/Public/irc/eionet-circle/core set/library l=/management documentation/indicator typology/ EN 1.0 a=d. Accessed 20 Jan 2011... 

Abstract Fluorescent molecules have been widely used as biomolecular labels, enzyme substrates, environmental indicators, and cellular stains and thus constitute indispensable tools in chemistry, physics, biology, and medicinal sciences. The large variation in the photophysics of the available fluorophores connected with chemical alterations give fluorescent probe techniques an almost unlimited scope for the detection of specific molecules and the investigation of intermolecular interactions on a molecular scale. 

Bockstaller C, Guichard L, Makowski D, Aveline A, Girardin P, Plantureux S (2009a) Agri-environmental indicators to assess cropping and farming systems. A review. In Lichtfouse... 

As expected, major environmental indicators are affected positively by the introduction of hydrogen cars. Demand for gasoline drops by more than 13% until 2030, compared with BAU, and demand for diesel by about 2%. The difference is significant, as in this scenario only passenger cars are equipped with fuel cells and H2-ICE engines, but neither buses nor light-duty vehicles are expected to be equipped with fuel cells. This means only a small share of diesel fuel consumers is affected, i.e., diesel cars, while buses, light- and heavy-duty vehicles (LDV, HDV) continue to run on diesel. 

Change of environmental indicators for EU25 compared with BAU (%)... 

Figure 18.16. Impact on environmental indicators through introduction of H2 cars for EU25.

The selection of variables is of central importance for the outcome of a system comparison on environmental and resource use impacts. The ideal variable or set of variables respectively provides information and describes the state of environmental phenomena with certain significance. Thus, applying a set of variables should make it possible to monitor and assess the state of the environment, to identify changes and trends, to transmit scientific data to become relevant for policy, and to evaluate already implemented policy measures. The concept of environmental indicators is broadly accepted as an adequate tool. Accordingly, an indicator is defined as a parameter or a value derived from parameters, which indicates the state of the environment with significance extending beyond that which is directly associated with a parameter value. A parameter s definition in this context is a property that is measured or observed (OECD 1994). Fieri et al. (1996) states that the purposes of indicators are as follows ... 

After initiation by the AGENDA 21 various institutions started working on environmental indicator concepts. A comprehensive report on existing approaches of environmental indicator concepts is given by Walz et al. (1995). They describe that most of the concepts already published and available for international comparisons suffer from... 

There is a general agreement within the research community that the DSR-framework is the most perfeeted and therefore the highest internationally accepted framework. This enhanees the international standard of environmental indicators (Munchhausen and Nieberg 1997, Walz et al. 1995). Due to these reasons and due to the international approach of the projeet, this study relies on the set of environmental indieators for the agricultural sector developed within the DSR-framework by the OECD. 

The OECD set of environmental indicators for the agricultural sector contains several sub-categories assigned to each of the three DSR-elements (OECD 1997) ... 

Evaluation frame environmental indicators for farming systems... 

To summarise, the indicators to be looked at in this study adhere to the restrictions on indicators, which are in the evaluation frame shown in Figure 1. Basically, they correspond with the respective environmental indicators for agriculture suggested by the OECD (1997). The complete list of indicators, including the name of the section they will be analysed in, is shown in Table 2-2. 

Table 2-2 Environmental Indicators for organic farming based on the OECD list...

With the decision to analyse the environmental and resource use impacts of organic and conventional farming on the basis of environmental indicators, the... 

Relating data to the output takes the productivity of a farming system into consideration. If two systems differ in their productivity, the analysis of an environmental indicator leads to different results for the input and the output. This fact often causes some confusion about the results of an indieator analysis, its interpretation and its relevance. 

To relate an environmental indicator to the land area makes sense in those eases in which the decision has been taken to maintain a stable agrieultural land area. The only question is whether to farm it organically or conventionally. On the other hand, it is appropriate to relate an environmental indicator to the output if the quantity of food to be produced is set, while farmland is variable. In this case the productivity is the important factor. Output results can change depending on the assumed level of productivity and the potential of productivity. An interpretation of the per unit of output approach could be a difficult task as it would also have to consider whether a change in the agricultural land area has positive or negative effects on the environment and the resource use. 

In terms of informed policy decision, it would be desirable to relate information to both the input and to the output. However, working with secondary data implies that many studies do not provide complete information. In most cases, though, data on an environmental indicator is only available on the input, the per unit of land area basis. Although in scientific terms it is deplorable that most information is not available on a per unit of output basis, this is less problematic for today s practical EU policy. Food surpluses are more of a problem in the current political environment than food scarcity and there seems to be a broad consensus to keep the amount of farmland relatively stable. Therefore, in the EU, in most cases, the policy relevant way is to apply the data on environmental indicators to the input on a the per unit of land area term. 

In order to improve the policy relevanee of the results, it is necessary to aggregate the indicators analysed to one final result, e.g. a sustainability index. Data aggregation currently faees the faet that there is no commonly accepted methodology to alleviate the problem of evaluating and summarising the environmental indicator data. 

Due to the fact that research studies applying environmental indicator data to output are scarce, the conclusions illustrated in the qualitative assessment scheme summarise our results for the input on a per hectare basis. 

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